/cofd/&/wodg/ Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness General

>Does that mean that you can take coils and Theban sorcery if you have status in Lancea and the Ordo?

Technically, there's no mechanical reason you can't learn as many Coils or Blood Sorcery types as you want, regardless of status, provided you have someone to teach you. So yes, you can.

However, each of the Covenants protects its secrets and rituals pretty carefully, so the chance of finding someone willing to teach you another Covenant's special powers is so slim it might as well be non-existent. You can be, say, in the Ordo and be friendly with the Circle, but no Acolyte would teach you Cruac - and if they did, and someone else found out, the whole Covenant would come after both of you.

Now, if you're being sneaky anyway, you could certainly trick someone into doing it, by pretending to be a member of another covenant... just, you know, don't get caught.

Book of the Dead is one of my favourites.

Don't get caught it pretty much the chronicle's theme. The premise is that the Lancea took control of the city and made life difficult for the Circle and the Ordo. Not outright banning them, but insisting that they do things in public so they can get checked out for heresy. Both of them started operating in secret and members either hide or join up with another covenant. Lancea eventually suffers a schism with the establishment siding with the Invictus and the protestants allying with the Carthians. Cold war breaks out over the schism with the Crone and Ordo being torn between supporting each other, biding their time, or supporting one side in the big fight. Chronicle starts as things heat up.

If there's a time for cross-covenant stuff, this is probably the game for it. Probably going to be cool.

Trying to get into this, Vampire: the Requiem tells me to look at the core rulebook, does it have some weird subtitle? Because I can't find the damn thing.

You're looking at 1e. Get 2e.
Also, it's just "World of Darkness".

So is Book of Spirits any good? What book would help me the most with running Mage adventures in the spirit world?

I can't say I liked the writing in Astral Realms nearly as much as Book of the Dead.

Similarly, is Equinox Road the best book for understanding the Gentry's Arcadia?
What about the Hedge?

Also, does anyone know if Mummies have some supernatural realm to call their own?

There's two major ones: Duat, where the Judges live, and Starry A'aru, an empty heaven. Not a whole lot for Mages in these places.

Isn't Duat just another name for the Underworld?

>preacher

If anything, Duat is /beneath/ the Underworld. I like the idea that Deathless amnesia is caused by having to pass through the Ocean of Fragments whenever they die.

Mummy is also the only line to treat Twilight as its own realm rather than a state of being. I think it's been implied that there are critters native to it, and it has distinct landmarks.

Thank you.

What about mummy stories in general?

What might a mummy NPC dearly want that a bunch of mages would be able to provide?

What reward could a mummy give that PC mages could only get from them?

>a very WoD comic

>What about mummy stories in general?

Mummies are amnesiac immortals from a forgotten pre-Egyptian empire that was ruled by possibly-alien necromancer/priests who served cruel and insane gods. They wake up when disturbed/when their cult needs them/every 1,461 years to cause trouble (like throwing meteors or consume cities in sand), build their cults, hunt down ancient artifacts, and try and regain their lost memories.

>What might a mummy NPC want from mages?

Relics and memories. If they have any delicious relics they can sacrifice to their gods, they'll be happy to exchange services (or, more likely, have their cult steal it) for such an object, especially if it dates back to their lost empire. A particularly skilled Fate or Mind mage might be able to help them briefly recover their identity or strengthen their sense of divine purpose. For more on this, we're getting a Mage/Mummy crossover in the Dark Eras Companion.

>What reward could a mummy give?

The use of their cult. 8000 year-old relics. The services of an angry demigod. Powerful ghost slaves. Cult membership.

Sweet. There definitely seems a ton to work with.

Dark Eras Companion?
Is that a separate book from the main Dark Eras that just came out?
Also would you say Dark Eras is worth buying for general setting knowledge, if I am not planning to run a non modern day chronicle?

And if I recall correctly, you also like WtF, as well as Mummy.

Would you mind giving your input on my Spirit related questions above?

Dark Eras was a crowdfunded project; enough extra settings got funded that cramming them into one book proved unfeasible, so the extras are going into a separate book. Dark Eras is awesome and very fun to read, and has material for all of the lines; you're likely to find something worth the cost of entry.

I don't know a lot about spirits (Werewolf is one of the games I know the least), but I belive most of Book of Spirits is outdated now; edition change hit it hard.

Equinox Road is gonna be of very little use to you unless you're running Changeling, as its specifically an endgame book for that line. Your best bet is probably to wait for The Hedge for info on (unsurprisingly) the Hedge, though Goblin Markets should tide you over.

Got any other Mummy questions?

Thanks. You are a great steward of these threads.

I don't know enough about mummy(yet) to have questions, but you certainly peaked my curiosity enough that I will add it to my reading list.

I'm just a shitposter with a name, user. But thanks! I like any excuse to talk about my favorite game.

any tips on writing a decent/loose backstory for dark ages: vampire?

i was thinking of telling the story of london gripped by a series of gruesome murder-sacrifices (jack the ripper style hysteria) orchestrated by the baali. i was going to have my PCs run around from npc to npc trying to track down clues for whodunnit, but i've realized that's probably way too over my head for such a noob ST

i have no idea how to manage to link characters/clues together without railroading my PCs

we haven't had our first session yet, i've only helped my players create their characters. do you think i should try to meticulously plan this murder mystery right down to the bone to make a compelling story or should i just improv along with my PC's decisions with a few carrots to push them in the right direction?

this is overwhelming, the little planning i've done makes me think they'll end up running in a straight line

So, besides the obvious answer (not doing it), how would you run a mixed-splat game? 2E CofD, unless somehow 1E would be better. All splats, though I'm hesitant about demon for fluff reasons and I'm hesitant about Beast for 'dev is literally against game balance'.

Eh. Werewolf and Vampire could work together. Both are predators, and until you go past Blood Potency/Primal Urge 5, they are pretty similar in power. They also complement each other pretty well.

I'd run a Mage/Demon one. Fighting the alliance of the Seers and the God-Machine.

>Granted, I'm mostly going off TV show Cassidy; only got started reading the comic a few days ago.

Cassidy is one of the few characters that it feels they got right in the TV series so far. Granted, it's hard to go wrong with the character, and there's still time for it to get fucked up.

Could someone red pill me on how Wendigos work in nWoD?
I was thinking of running a Hunter campaign centered around one, but I don't know if there is pre existing lore/rules for them

Sounds hella cool man

The only thing named Wendigo is a werewolf lodge. Nothing preexisting.

...

Nah, not going with the "Until Dawn" style ones.
Was thinking of something closer to pick related, with the ability to control the weather to make snowstorms.

Debating a one session V20 session revolving around my players escorting (re: hauling their purposefully paralyzed self in the back of a pick up truck) a salubri across their "sectless city." Any suggestion for decent conflict for it?

Question:

In VtR 1E, if a vampire is possessed by a ghost, can they still frenzy? Or, with the ghost in control, are they no longer able to be driven to frenzy, since the Beast has been supplanted by a different intelligence?

If you're just starting, easiest thing to do is to just have the players create links between themselves. You don't have to wrack your brain, trying to create a story as to how these characters know each other.

Another good idea that I remember someone saying: ask them for 3 goals. 1 is a long term goal that would probably only be achieved towards the end. 2nd goal is a middle-term one; it's difficult and may require a whole story to get there, but not as tough. And finally, 3rd goal is short-term; something that can be achieved relatively quickly in a few sessions. Collect all those goals and work them into the main story so that each player will have a reason to pursue it.

I know the paranoia about railroading, try not to overplan every small detail, because then you will run into the same trap as I did. If they investigate the corpse but fail to find the clues, have those clues appear somewhere else. If someone does exceptionally well, give him information that you were saving for later.

If you see they are getting bored, drop a murderer on them, or a pursuit or a chase. Improvising can be difficult and you can even unlearn it but try not to write countless pages, this will not be good. This will just give you a headache and you won't be able to tear yourself away from the notes

Now if this was a thing in Chronicles of Darkness, I'd expect Ludevic to get a KOS put on him by EVERY Werewolf.

What I don't get is, are the angels in Demon: The Descent mechanical or biomechanical or something?

>Ivory Claws.jpg

Yes
Angels and Demons both can be either biomechanical, mechanical, or entirely biological(though certainly not human). A Demon's Demonic Form is literally just what they looked like when they were still an Angel, and I highly recommend using the Demonic Form system to figure out, if nothing else, the appearance of your Angels.
(I personally ended up assuming there was a Numen equivelant to go with every Demonic Form power I couldn't find a clear way of representing already, because it made them an actual competitive threat against the players)

Something. Well, really they're both. Angels aren't on the whole either one. They're whichever the role the were created for required. Sometimes their Angelic form wasn't really important and they're a mass of spare parts from biological and mechanical previous angels that were taken back in for repurposing.

Well, the starting Demonic Form is. They get added pieces as they go up in Primum, and can readjust the pieces that they have at the same time. A Demon can become quite a different monster than what they were, if they want.

That's hella cool, I'm taking a liking to this.

Make it up son.

I remembered reading a bit of Equinox road, its not so much about the hedge but the tragic endgame of changeling which mostly focuses on Arcadia. More importantly its about your changelings slow turn into true fae

Yeah make it like a rank 3 or rank 4 spirit, maybe a magath of death and cold? Maybe all Wendigo are magath. There's nothing specific in the books, so you can do whatever feels right.

Bumping for this bc I still need an answer

The books don't say, so use your best judgement
I'd say yes, they can still frenzy, because they don't suddenly stop being intelligence went they frenzy.
They can't control themselves, so neither could a ghost that's possessing them, probably.

Depends on which splats you're mixing. In theory, you could do it by heavily micromanaging character creation to ensure a "sort" of balance.

I fluffed them like this just because it's such a rarely used creature type in game. From my understanding though, they're suppose to be biomechanical clockwork beings, so it's not far off, just replace the tubes with watch gears and wires.

Forgot pic

They could work any number of ways. You could stat them as a cryptid using Demon the Descents rules, as that's always fun. You could also just make them a horror and give them some dread powers regarding weather control and cannibalism.

Am I the only one who preferred the VII to the Strix?

VII was so shrouded in mystery its a threat that sideswipes all of vampire politics when it completely rears its head.

Strix seems more like the vampire boogieman. A sort of natural predator of vampires, thats just another thing for the Sheriff and his posse to deal with.

I prefer the Strix, but I also preferred Exalted's 2nd to 1st editions

But.. the VII are still there.

They don't necessarily have to be clockwork. Just mechanical.
I tend to go with function-suggests-form; if they were designed for a purpose related to time, they probably have a clockpunk thing going on. If they're designed to work with vehicles, they're more deiselpunk.
Et Cetera

Fuck off, captcha
I just had to solve 10 fucking captchas in a row for this one post

VII didn't go anywhere and still has one of the greatest CofD supplements everywhere.

Yeah but they're tied with some connection to the owls man.

I like to write them as their own entity.

So...just do it?
There is no canon. Do whatever the fuck you want.
Nobody's gonna get mad at you for saying the Strix don't exist in your game.

Well maybe I brought it up for the sake of discussion!? Tell me why you like the strix!

Honestly I don't run or play vampire, but from what I know of them they seem like a neat alternative antagonist for vampires besides 'other vampires'

Strix provides the exact same thing, though. A single strix is enough to fuck up an entire domain and will basically be the talk of the town when it comes. What happens when MORE then one strix shows up? No one knows what they are, what they want, or exactly what they can do, and they can terrorize the vampire society and bring politics to a halt just by possessing the right vamp.

I love the idea behind Dark Eras, but they honestly picked some pretty redundant timelines/areas for some of the games.

VtR 2e has multiple rumors, only some of which tie into the Strix. In the book for VII, you get three fully-described non-Strix options. Why complain?

>1950's New Zealand
???????

Overall the book is good.

"Oh, you're drafting Hellbent? Well fuck you".

What's funny is that it's not really the subject of a whole chapter or anything, it's just one sort of throwaway bit, if I recall.

>VII was so shrouded in mystery its a threat that sideswipes all of vampire politics when it completely rears its head.
You mean like the Strix? Hell, it's not like VII really do that. They're still just vampires, no matter how weird and secretive. Are you sure you're not thinking of the "even more Sabbat than the Lance" Belial's Brood?

Most of the Strix honestly seem like Spirits that exist for the sole purpose of being shitheads, which makes them a little more interesting than the Spirits that exist with strange and alien goals. A Spirit kills ten kids because it's in its nature and that kind of thing will give it Essence. A Strix kills ten kids because Strix are evil bastards. If you throw in the Miracle Dread Power (from CofD Core) they basically become traditional spooky possession style Demons.

As far as Vampires go, though? I would never probably use one, but they turn the game into fucking The Thing. "Who goes there?" No way of telling who's friend and who's foe. You get a There Are Monsters on Maple Street thing going, where the whole Domain can tear itself apart even if the Strix has already fucked off and left.

1950 is still pretty recent though. Read a couple newspapers from NZ and you'll know all you need to run a 1950 game. There are tons of interesting eras to go through.

It shows the side effects of wyrd 7 for each class of changeling most of which are pretty scary.

To take a cue from you, Atamajakki:
>tfw no pirate geist

Of course, of my many forgotten and unfinished products, this was one of them. I'd even come up with the start to some sailing rules (they were teamwork actions, like Tactics). I didn't know how to handle the presence of famous pirates. Making them supers or even sin-eaters felt silly.

I disagree. We really tend to underestimate the recent past.
But I think that poster was more saying "why the fuck did they pick this as a core setting?"
Pretty awesome, you mean.

Just make them badass mortals. Why do people have problems with making competent characters who don't have anything supernatural going for them?

Pirate [something] and Biblical Hunter are the two Eras I'm most hitter about not getting.

Fingers crossed for Dark Eras 2.

Well, it's more that you obviously want these people involved some way in your venue. And for some of them it might even be pretty fitting, if you treat their legends as being true.

Geist 1600s Age of Sail actually WAS a choice, but because of FTP voting it didn't get in.

I set my thing in Nassau, because Nassau is fucking awesome. I really need to catch up on Black Sails.

It wasn't specifically Geist, was it? I thought it was a "we'll choose the game for it" lile Edo Japan was.

Even with any complaints I might have, Neolithic Mage, Alexandrian Mage, and Aztec Demon made the book well worth it. The Companion seems even more full of stuff I'm excited for.

Yep. Book of Judges was a must. That's really one of the most interesting settings they could have gotten in there. And it's for Hunter also, it would have been just amazing.

You'll find some way to do it.

Like having blackbeard piss off some ancient carribean ghost when stealing his cursed treasure and then your crew has to find some way of dealing with one of the most notorious pirates to ever sail the 7 seas.

Or have one of his crew members be a Sin-Eater and convince them to bombard some spanish fort because THEY stole that cursed treasure.

Aztec Demon? Wasn't it Skinchangers?

I would have liked Aztec Geist.

Skinchangers with a ton of Demon and God-Machine stuff added. It's really, really good.

There's an offhand mention of a pyramid functioning as teleporter Infrastructure that allowed some Mummies into the New World early.

Thanks for the advice guys.
Spirits are in Werewolf, right? And which books are horrors found in? I'm kinda new to nWoD (hence my asking in the first place).

Horrors are the catch-all term for "weird monsters" made with the rules in the Chronicles of Darkness corebook. Hunter has similar rules for building your own opposition.

I don't know what's going on here, but it looks like something CofD-y
youtu.be/MvBo_rKleNw
Deviant especially.

But also maybe a more fleshy God-Machine.

Fucking Tzimisce!

Well, ran the first session of my Hong Kong Werewolf game - went pretty well! One of the characters has just had their First Change and been picked up by the rest of the pack, which is interesting because I haven't actually run an immediate-post-Change situation for a player character before.

Meanwhile:
- there are shenanigans with uppity Wolf-Blooded ('Auntie' Hu, the pack's oldest Wolf-Blooded, is *really* salty that she never Changed).
- what may be a Fire-Touched-sponsored bomb plot (foiled when the First Changing Ithaeur ripped the would-be bomber to pieces in his own flat)
- something going on with icons of the Judges of the Hells (you may also have heard them called the Yama Kings)
- the mysterious death of the pack's previous Ithaeur (who had some of his innards removed without inflicting any wounds or injuries)
- and the fact that they think Death Wolf herself placed her attention on the tower block that the Ithaeur First Changed during (she has the Embodiment of the Firstborn merit).

All in all, fun enough and I'm looking forward to the next game. We're gonna hopefully be podcasting these again, trying to sort out a new hosting service for them.

...

I really wanted Spanish Inquisition Hunter.

Question about merit prerequisites.

For example if I wanted a Sanctum I need a dot in Safe Place.

Is there any difference between a 5 dot Sanctum with 1 dot in safe place vs a 5 dot sanctum with 5 dots in safe place?

yes

>Deviant
>fleshy God-Machine
porque no los dos?

I'm a sucker for anything Hong Kong; glad to hear it went so well.

Prerequisites should honestly be treated a little loosely. That said, for what you want, the Sanctum part determines extra spell control, but the Safe Place determines size and defenses.

A 5 dot Sanctum with a 1 dot Safe Space might be something your ST might not want you to have, but if they do, it would represent a small shrine or something that centers you and aligns with your Gnosis, but is really the only place you have as part of your Safe Space, so it's not all that safe. It might only be locked with a single mundane key.

A 5 dot Sanctum in a 5 dot Safe Place would be a larger shrine in a secure complex, perhaps with magical and digital security in place, or even traps designed to harm any unauthorized entry. It might have steel security doors and guards, and could even be in an out of the way location.

1 dot in safe place is like a formal written request to your storyteller to mess with your sanctum.

Expect it to get ransacked, expect squatters, expect to be ambushed as you are heading home.

Gonna be running a game of WoD for complete strangers in about 24 hours. I've GM'ed many times before, so no problems there, but i've never used this system before. I've read up on the mechanics, i've got them all down, so again, no problems there.

BUT WHAT FUCKING DO?!?!?!

Whats a good one shot adventure for a group of 3 - 4 humans in the World of Darkness?

Still looking for advice from someone who knows about Spirits, and how to best integrate them into a Mage game. I don't want to just leave out the whole arcanum, but am not sure what really sets it apart from Mind or Death. All three let you enter a version of Twilight and explore an otherworldly realm, but Mind just seems to have so much more utility and is useful everywhere, while visiting realms without access to the spirit world, for example the Underworld, leaves the Spirit Master kind of screwed.
Can spirits do something that Goetia simply can't?

Specifically, what I want an answer for, is what books will help me understand the spirit world the most?
Werewolf the Forsaken Core?

I haven't heard a lot of praise for Book of Spirits, unlike Book of the Dead, which I loved.

They all had a brush with the supernatural, and are now in group therapy together, learning how to deal with whatever caused their "stress induced hallucinations"

Anywhere to (somewhat) reliably find WoD games? Been reading oWod and nWoD Demon coresets and man I got a real hankerin for those now.

If you're a Spirit Master going into the Underworld, you bring the Spirits with you (or can Make them).
Shadow is essentially a magical fantasy world where everything eats everything else. Book of Spirits is good, but apparently Werewolf 1e is the best source of Spirit info.

Really, though, for everything you're sort of left to your own devices, semi-intentionally. Don't even feel like you *have* to abide by everything in Book of the Dead.

The Shadow, much like The Underworld or The Hedge, is one of those places you should really never go unless you specifically need something or you're crazy and like danger.
Thankfully, PCs are fond of Danger. Really, though, all you need to know about it is on page 245 of Mage. Spirits are also in Mage starting on page 252 "Invisible Entities"

Spirits are kind of like a cross between ghosts and animals.
They can manipulate things related to their domains (e.g. a tree spirit could make a nearby tree grow fruit), but are obsessed with their particular "thing" and understand things within that context. So if you want to tell a mouse spirit about a bad guy, it will understand a lot better if you call the bad guy a "cat".

Most of my knowledge of spirits comes from /wodg/ threads of old, with a bit from Forsaken 2e.

I don't know enough about Goetia to give any comparisons.